Amen!
Otis Wright
Mike Johnston wrote:
> >I have another theory. Maybe Pentax was trying to collect our opinions over
> >the last few years in order to finalize their MZ-S (the name is not
> >important) features. Now they have collected enough information (they think)
> >and the MZ-S is about ready. In order to cut down the cost, they have
> >decided to drop the list and let someone else to run it. That means from now
> >on, what we said was less important that we used to be. Just a guess.
>
> Here's another think, more based in the reality of the camera industry:
>
> Once upon a time, the American market was the be-all and end-all of the
> Japanese camera companies, and everything we wanted, they fell over
> themselves to make. Now, the American market is relatively less important
> than the world market and the home (Japanese) market, and it's relatively
> unaffected by corporate responsiveness anyway, PLUS the SLR market has
> become only a tiny fraction of the parent company's camera profit picture.
> Upshot? They just don't listen to us, period. They don't need to. Japanese
> companies haven't been heeling to the beck and call of the American consumer
> for some time now. Our day is done.
>
> In fact, from inside the industry, what you often hear is that the Japanese
> home offices of the camera companies don't even listen very well to the
> American distributorships--and often don't tell them very much about what's
> going on. Chance are, Pentax USA isn't very well informed about what Pentax
> Japan is doing, Pentax Japan doesn't much give a fig what Pentax USA thinks,
> and "our" opinion isn't worth a hill of beans to either one of them.
>
> I don't think it matters much whether Pentax USA is, or is not, "listening"
> to our alleged collective wisdom. Difficult though it may be for us to adapt
> to this fact, this is not the 1960s, and we simply aren't important any more
> to a Japanese company's financial health.
>
> Here's a vivid example of what I mean: a couple of years ago, I got a Kodak
> company insider to admit to me that, for a 5-year period, Kodak had
> essentially "forgotten" about what it calls the "AdAm" market--advanced
> amateurs. It was marketing to far larger and more important markets, such as
> grandmothers and "tween" girls, but it had become largely inconsequential to
> them that photography enthusiasts also buy photographic materials. We're
> such a tiny group relatively speaking that we just don't matter much to the
> company. (Incidentally, when it "remembered" about us, Kodak responded by
> starting to market a slick, expensive captive newsletter called "ViewFinder"
> as an "alternative" to advertising in enthusiast magazines. Big whoop.)
>
> Japan stopped making cameras primarily for the American market some time
> ago. What its home market thinks of new products is now far more important
> to any Japanese company than what we think. We should wake up and get used
> to that fact. Our opinion really doesn't matter one way or the other. It's
> hubristic and somewhat ludicrous--not to mention outdated--for us to believe
> that it does.
>
> --Mike
>
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